He thought little of the cattle-freight rumbling on its rails,

the paddocks of horses, the sheepfold always crammed

with living wool. Frost on the flatland coursed

beneath him, and the river faded offstage, and even

the cricket in the thorn and the tick on the rye envied,he was sure, the moonlight on his silken pelt.

He heard the bell waking the household,

and the rooster’s alarm, but he wondered

about the ordinary not at all, the hawk with her talon,

the snake with her long-arriving tongue,

all nothing compared with the single supple

arm of his talent with its legendary teeth.

When the hound loosed her ragged clamor,

and the rifle its seed, surely his hubris

was forgivable as he let his pursuit

see him in his tawny glamor, gazing back

with his inspiring profile to watch them coming on,

village and homestead, churchwarden and dandy,

all shocked at his bloody prowess but

harmless to his career in those storied days

when he seized without mercy,

killed at his leisure,

in the early hours of his glory when

he lived on what he thought he was.